


FROM ZOMBIE TO GIRLFRIEND! HOW TO DO IT IN SIX EASY STEPS!

by htbthomas



Category: iZombie (TV)
Genre: Angst and Humor, Developing Relationship, F/M, Out of Sequence Timestamps, Pre-and-Post Cure, Yuletide 2015, Yuletide Treat, Zombie Cure, a little bit of background Major, diverges before Episode 2.09
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-24
Updated: 2015-12-24
Packaged: 2018-05-05 10:29:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5372000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/htbthomas/pseuds/htbthomas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A boy, a girl, a cure — what could be easier?</p>
            </blockquote>





	FROM ZOMBIE TO GIRLFRIEND! HOW TO DO IT IN SIX EASY STEPS!

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lady_ragnell](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lady_ragnell/gifts).



> Hope you enjoy this treat! Inspiration for the title [here](http://dduane.tumblr.com/post/133858857966/actualmenacebuckybarnes-hotguyhawkguy-from).
> 
> Thanks to my beta, drayton!

_One Week After Cure Day_  
When Liv walks into the morgue that morning, Ravi has to blink and rub his eyes. Of course, it might be because she’s backlit from the morning sun streaming down the steps, but he chooses to think otherwise. She’s glowing, cheeks flush with the fullness of life. Her white coat contrasts rather than blends in, and her eyes shine calm blue-green instead of rage red.

“Ravi…” she says, coming to a stop, brows drawing together. “Is everything okay?”

“Okay?” he asks, shaking his head in disbelief. “Are you joking?” He comes forward to wrap her in a hug, and after a moment, she melts into it. “You’re here.”

Liv rests in his arms for a long minute, then pulls her head back to look up at him. “Where else would I be? My vacation is over, and it’s Monday-look-at-which-bodies-piled-up-over-the-weekend o’clock.” She doesn’t need to say that her vacation was mostly rest and recuperation after being injected with the cure. Major and Peyton had kept watch by her bedside in turns. Ravi had been on call, just in case a second dose was needed. But it hadn’t been. Every minute this week, he’d listened for the telltale buzz and ringtone, ready to spring into action. Instead, it had been a lonely week, just him and the corpses.

“Well,” he says, squinting awkwardly. “I’m little surprised. You don’t really need the, you know, easy access to brains.” He pauses. “You don’t, do you? Are you getting cravings?”

She shakes her head and places a hand on his arm. “No, no. I’m eating regular food like regular humans. I had a blueberry pancake stack with cream cheese filling for breakfast. With extra syrup.” Her eyes roll up into her head, and he thinks he can see a drop of drool form at the corner of her mouth.

He’s relieved. “That’s good. With Major?” He tries to keep the jealousy out of his voice. But it’s hard. He _was_ jealous. He had wanted to be there to record the progress of his patient. Understandably, the Seattle police department couldn’t afford to have both the ME and the assistant ME out in the same week. 

He tamps down the little voice that says, _only to check on her progress? Really, Ravi?_

“Yeah, with Major. And Peyton.” She nudges him with an elbow. “Should we have invited you, too?”

“Well, I wasn’t going to say anything before, but…” He hams it up, just a little, his hand on his chest in mock-insult. “Surely you’re aware of my love for that sweet, sweet blue.”

She laughs. “I’ll remember next time.” She heads for the back to scrub up for the day. He watches her go, heart warm. She’s staying on at the morgue, at least for now. He’ll take as long as he can get.

.

 _One Month Before Cure Day_  
“What is it?” Liv asks, voice bubbling with anticipation. “I can’t take the suspense.”

Ravi keeps his gloved hands over her eyes as they walk, as snugly as comfortable. “No, not yet. But I promise it will be worth it.”

“Okay. Is it a new body? Because you know mama’s got a craving for that Vitamin B.”

“No. And ew.” He stops then, right in front of the rat cages. “It’s something much better.” He removes his hands from her eyes and pulls off the sheet covering one of the cages with a flourish. “Ta da!”

Liv blinks a couple of times, eyes re-adjusting to the light. Pictures of You, the miracle rat, is calmly chewing on a pellet in his cage, coat shiny and best of all, brown. “It’s a rat,” she says, the tone of her voice rising upward in confusion.

“There’s no getting anything past you is there,” he jokes. Then he points at the nameplate on the side of the cage. “It’s Pictures of You.”

“Of me—?” The light goes on in her eyes. “Oh my gosh, the rat? The cure? It worked?” She grabs onto his arm with both her hands and grips tightly. “It really worked?” Too tight. Ow.

She’s just as excited as he’d hoped—which makes all the months of work completely worth it. 

“So, when can I use it?” she asks, already rolling up the sleeve of her lab coat.

He waves his hands frantically back and forth. He’s too afraid to risk her, yet warmed by her immediate trust. “Whoa, whoa! Not yet.” He stands protectively between Liv and the cage, as nonsensical as that seems a moment later. “I need to give it a few more weeks, make sure the cure really took.”

Liv lets out a disappointed sigh. “A few more weeks? I don’t know if I can wait that long,” she says. No, whines. An actual, grating-on-the-ears whine.

“Darling, I’m sorry,” he tells her, waggling a finger, “Mummy always said patience was a virtue.”

Liv crosses her arms and pouts.

“Wow.” He’s glad that she doesn’t have the combination to the lock on the case with the samples. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you’d eaten a five-year-old for breakfast.”

“Um…” She shuffles a foot.

“What?!” 

“Well, it wasn’t a five-year-old, but I think he definitely had some regression issues. Or maybe he was just an entitled son of a bitch. There any Flamin’ Hot Cheetos left?” And just like that she’s snapped back to herself. Er, her zombie self. 

Which is the only Liv he’s ever known. He turns back to the cage and bends down to peer in at Pictures of You, who is still looking as healthy and brown as ever. Ravi’s lips turn up, just a little. He’s looking forward to meeting the other Liv.

.

 _One Month After Cure Day_  
“Thanks for coming,” Peyton says, letting him into the apartment. Her eyes are tight, worried. “She won’t get out of bed.”

“Out late partying?” Ravi teases to break the tension, but it falls flat. Peyton doesn’t even bother shooting him an annoyed look; she just leads him back to Liv’s bedroom.

When he looks into the bedroom, his stomach drops. He can barely see the top of Liv’s head, she is so burrowed under the duvet. What happened? Is the cure reversing, just when they’d thought Liv was out of the woods? She’d been fine in all her daily checkups, totally normal. Normal for a human—blood pressure normal, appetite normal, pigment at previous levels… 

He sits on the side of the bed, Peyton hovering behind him. “Liv, hon?” He pats the covers above what he assumes is her shoulder. “Are you all right?”

Liv moans, but doesn’t move.

“Was that a yes moan or a no moan? It’s a bit hard to hear through three layers of goose down.”

The duvet peels downward, a few inches, enough to uncover her mouth. Barely. “I don’t know.”

He looks carefully at what he sees. Her hair's a mess, but it’s brown; none of the white has returned. Her face is blotchy and red rather than pale white. Her eyes have dark circles under them, but not the kohl-black look she’d sported as a follower of the all-brain diet. She just looks… “You look tired.” Dead tired, though he leaves the quip unsaid. 

“I haven’t been able to sleep,” she says, not opening her eyes. “Everytime I try, all I see are zombies. People who look like zombies, people who don’t look like zombies, but somehow are. Even when I’m awake, I see them everywhere.” She shivers and opens her eyes, then her hand shoots out from under the covers and clamps on to Ravi’s arm. “Help me, Ravi. Take this away.”

He flinches with the shock of it, but her grip doesn’t seem preternaturally strong. “Do you think this is some sort of side effect? Are you feeling any cravings?”

“I don’t know,” she repeats. “My whole body just goes tingly at random intervals, and all my hair stands on end. On the street, in the coffee shop, the other day in the morgue when that couple came to identify a body, and in my dreams, too.” Her grip goes slack, her hand flopping to the sheets. “Is my body rejecting the cure after all?”

“Let’s check.” Ravi bends over to dig in his bag for the blood pressure cuff, the stethoscope, a syringe to draw a blood sample. “What did Major say?”

“He didn’t.” She rolls over, but leaves her arm exposed for the cuff.

“What?”

Peyton answers for her. “He hasn’t been around for the past week.”

“That’s odd.” Ravi thinks about the past week at his place. Major’s been around, or at least has left traces of himself—a discarded towel, an empty box of cereal, the channel changed on the telly. But Ravi doesn’t remember really _seeing_ him. He’d just assumed Major was spending a lot of time at Liv’s. So where is he? “I’m sure he’s okay.”

“Yeah,” Peyton says. “Liv tried to call him, but he said he had an unexpected business trip.”

“Business trip?” It doesn’t make sense, given the evidence. Maybe Ravi’s seeing things as well.

“He’s avoiding me,” Liv says, face buried in the covers again. “He knows I’m about to revert back.”

“No… he wouldn’t…” Ravi assures her, though he’s far from sure himself. He continues to check her vitals, because that’s the best way to help right now.

“Yes.” She sighs. “I told him about the zombie dreams and the shivers and he just got quiet and the next morning he suddenly had this trip.”

That’s… concerning. Maybe Liv’s not the only one having side effects from the cure. Maybe Major’s been better at hiding it.

He finishes drawing blood, and then caps the vial. When he looks back at her, she’s lying there limply, staring at the ceiling with glassy eyes. “I’ll test this and let you know if anything out of the ordinary shows up,” he tells her. “I’ll give Major a call, to see if he’s all right.”

She turns her head to give him a wan smile. “Thanks. In the meantime… you got any morphine in that bag?”

He chuckles. “I don’t tend to carry that around. And it might not be wise. Let me see if there’s a safer sedative for your situation.” There’s a buzz from his pocket, so he checks the screen. It’s Babineaux. “Good afternoon, Detective. Is there another body?”

 _“Yes. But not the dead kind.”_ Before Ravi can ask what he means by that, Babineaux continues. _“I got your roommate down here at the station. Looks like he’s been on a hunting trip.”_

“Hunting trip?” Now Ravi’s even more confused. What has Major gotten himself into?

_“And his prey wasn’t deer—unless deer are suddenly walking on two legs, getting spray tans and wearing Armani.”_

.

 _One Week Before Cure Day_  
“What in the hell is going on here?” 

Ravi goes cold, his hands stilling. Babineaux’s voice is right over his shoulder.

Dammit, he should have made doubly sure to lock the doors, or turned off the lights in the morgue proper, or… scattered the floor in front of the entrance with marbles or something. He was getting lazy, with only a week to go before giving her the cure. And now, Babineaux has caught them in the midst of field surgery. 

Liv is frozen with fear and shock, except her lips are opening and closing like a fish out of water. She doesn’t cover the wide-open foot-long gash visible on her leg, stitches half done from the bottom.

Ravi sets down the thread and needle and turns. Babineaux wears an expression of complete horror, and what other kind of expression could he have? The wound is completely bloodless, the layers of skin and muscle neatly sliced open down to the bone, where the perp had slashed her earlier this evening. It looks like the skin of a cadaver, like one of the people they get in daily for examination. Except this corpse has been walking and talking and remaining a functioning member of society for over a year. Through brains.

“You—” Babineaux starts. He swallows. “You said Jones only slashed your clothing.”

Not what Ravi was expecting, but maybe he should have. Babineaux is nothing but logical and level-headed.

“It’s—” Liv says with a shudder, but Ravi jumps right on top. 

“It’s a rare condition. A combination of exceedingly low blood pressure, combined with flow-suppressing drugs—”

Liv stops his ridiculous attempt at explanation with a hand. “Ravi.” She squeezes his arm, a determined press. “I think it’s time he knew. Maybe he should have known all along.”

“Known what?” Babineaux’s starting to tense up. Will he explode?

“Are you sure?” Ravi asks.

“If I’m cured in a week, I have to have a reason why my visions have miraculously stopped. If I’m not? I don’t know if I can keep up the pretense any longer. I’m just…” Her shoulders droop in defeat. “Tired.”

“If you two don’t tell me why my sidekick assistant medical examiner is sitting on a table with her leg sliced open like she’s a goddamn medical hospital cadaver, I am going to—”

“I’m a zombie.”

She says it with no preamble, no fear.

Babineaux blinks at her, then at Ravi, then back at her. “A what now?”

“A brain-eating, undead, shoot-me-in-the-heart-and-I-get-back-up-again, honest-to-goodness zombie. Have been since right before I met you.” 

Ravi lifts his hands in a helpless _Surprise!_ gesture.

“I swear, the two of you think you’re funny, but you’re really, _really_ not,” Babineaux growls.

“We’re not joking,” Liv tells him.

“She’s,” Ravi starts to say “dead serious” but he knows that would be counter-productive, “telling the truth. I have months of research I could show you, all of my tests looking for a cure.”

Babineaux stills. “You _are_ serious.” 

Ravi watches Liv bite her lip, probably to keep herself from making that joke as well. “You know how I said I was going to have to explain those visions? Well, in order to keep from turning into the ‘Grr. Argh.’ sort of zombie, I have to eat brains.” She closes her eyes and takes a long breath. “I crave them, Clive. So I became a medical examiner to have easy access to them, without, you know, having to resort to murder, but the brain-eating has a side-effect.”

“The visions. The sudden personality changes. The deep but temporary knowledge of esoteric subjects,” Ravi explains. “All that jazz.”

“All that comes from eating the brains of murder victims.” Babineaux looks like he’s moved past horror, shock and outrage to trying to puzzle it out. “Was Captain Suzuki a zombie, too?”

Liv looks guilty. Ravi feels the same. “Yes, we think so.”

Babineaux nods as if pieces are falling into place in his mind. “And there’s a cure?”

“It hasn’t been tested on a human zombie yet, just rats,” Ravi says. “But the results have been very hopeful. Liv’s going to try it in a week.”

“I see.” Babineaux has taken a few steps closer, examining the wound with hesitant fascination. Then he looks up, his face full of concern. “And if it fails?”

“Well, then—” Ravi begins, but this time Liv interrupts. “Then I’m back where I started. Or worse, this is all over for good.” She says it so calmly, like she’s been considering the possibility for much longer than a month.

“But you’re not gonna let that happen, Doc.” Babineaux’s eyes are hard, the edges red with unexpressed emotion. “Are you?”

Ravi takes Liv’s hand, enclosing it between both of his. “Of course not.” He tries not to let the doubt and worry show in his voice, but he thinks Liv probably senses it, anyway. 

.

 _Six Months After Cure Day_  
“How does it look? Does it look fine?”

Ravi glances up from stirring the soup, a creamy tomato and herb blend. “I’m sure the table looks just as fine as it did ten minutes ago, Olivia.”

She turns and crinkles her nose at him—she knows he knows she hates that name. “I just want it to be perfect! I’m going to worry if I want to. Fight me.”

Ravi holds up his hands, wooden spoon still in one hand. “Never! Although I bet I could take you now you that don’t have your zombie strength…”

She passes by him on the way to the fridge, and whaps him on the arm. “Don’t be so sure, pretty boy.”

“Ow,” he complains, feigning injury. “I take it back.”

She stands in the open doorway to look for something, letting the cold air out, enough that he starts to shiver. Sometimes he wonders if she hasn’t kept a little of that chilled blood from her zombie days. He opens his mouth to tell her to hurry and shut the fridge before the whole house turns into an ice cube, when he sees it. A tremble in her fingers, a glazed look in her eyes.

He turns down the soup to a simmer and gently closes the door for her, wrapping her in his arms from behind. “Liv, I’m here; it’s gonna be okay.”

After a moment, she sinks into his embrace. “But what if everything goes sideways and my family ends up hating me even more? My mother has never forgiven me for refusing to help my brother.”

He slowly caresses the sides of her arms, calming her the only way he knows how. “But now we can explain to them why. The Max Rager scandal has been all over the news, and they’ve sounded the call for victims to get help.” 

Major had been instrumental in bringing them down—he’d received a reduced sentence in exchange for his full cooperation. And once he’d explained to Liv what the shivers and hair standing on end really meant, Liv was helping to find victims who were… hesitant to come in.

Ravi kisses the top of her head. “They’ll understand. And if not… I’m here for you.”

She hums with happiness and turns around in his arms to face him. “You’ve always been here for me.” She moves closer into his embrace, to lightly scrape her fingernails across his back. She loves to do that, now that she can again. He loves it, too. “Even when no one else was, you were.” She pulls him close, snuggling her head into his chest. “You always were.”

They just stand there for a minute, gently swaying back and forth. She’s had a bit of a rough go for the past few years; she deserves a heap of goodness for the future. “I always will, you know,” he says after a while.

She lifts her head. “I know.” Then she pulls him down for a kiss. It starts slow and gentle, but soon turns more passionate, her hands drifting to his hips to pull him with a jerk against hers. She’s a bit of a savage when she wants something. Yet another holdover from the zombie days? Or is it just Liv?

Of course, he thinks as he kisses her harder, drawing a moan from her throat, it doesn’t matter. It’s just Liv, as he’s always known her, as he knows her now. 

She jumps up to wrap her legs around his waist, and he lifts her onto the counter. As she fumbles at the button on his trousers, he briefly wonders how long they have until Liv’s family arrives. When she slips her hand inside, he doesn’t really care anymore.

.

 _Cure Day_  
“Are you ready?”

Liv takes a deep breath, her eyes fluttering closed. There’s a small smile on her lips, one of hope. “Yes.” Ravi, on the other hand, wishes he felt anywhere near hopeful as she looks.

Major, Peyton and Clive are standing off to the side, faces filled with worry and hope and fear—really, some mixture of all three. They’re here for support, or for backup, whatever is needed. Liv wanted them here, and Ravi couldn’t deny her that request.

Especially if it’s her last.

Ravi is more than worried, a touch more than afraid. He’s terrified. Oh, there’s hope, too—Ravi has seen the effects of the latest version of the cure on his rats. They’d gone from brown fur to white fur to brown again, and they’ve lived for over a month, showing no signs of zombie backsliding. 

When the rats had seemed cured for a week, Liv had asked to try the cure. “What if it’s temporary?” he’d said. Maybe it helped that she’d just consumed a meal of elderly shut-in, but she’d backed off.

When the rats had been cured for two weeks, Liv had tried to negotiate with him. “Two weeks of normalcy versus years of zombieism—seems like a fair trade to me.” The litigator’s brain wore off in a few days and he convinced her to wait a little longer.

At three weeks, he caught her trying to break into the case where the samples were kept. “I can do it myself, Ravi!” her murdered-junkie self wailed the whole time he tried to drag her away from the box. “I’m a master with a needle. I need my fix, dude!” In the end, the only thing that had kept her from trying the cure that day was the tamper-proof case.

Now they’re at a month, and she’s right at the end of her brain-food cycle, the few hours where she’s fully herself—a little hungry, but not ravenous and feral. But he asks her again, as much for himself as for her, “Are you sure you’re ready?”

Liv opens her eyes and smiles at him. “I’ve been ready for the past three weeks, Ravi.” She places a hand on top of his gloved one, squeezing it gently. “Haven’t you noticed? No matter whose brains I’ve been on, that resolve has remained.”

He looks down at her hand, resting on his, then up into her dark-rimmed eyes. She trusts him, completely. He doesn’t even trust himself that much.

“All right, then.” He takes a fortifying breath in, and out. He pulls the stopper on the syringe, tests for air bubbles, then places the needle on her skin. “This might sting a little…” The needle slides in, and he doesn’t know if this is a beginning or an end.

.


End file.
